I love coming across a plugin or script I haven’t used before that really solves a problem for me. I figure if I get frustrated with something in Illustrator, there is probably someone else out there that has the same problem. A recent frustration of mine was selecting Effects in Illustrator. Luckily I stumbled across the Select Effects Plugin from Worker 72a.
If you have read some of my Tips & Tricks before, you know that I am all about saving time and increasing productivity when using Illustrator. Creating custom views in Illustrator is another trick I use to save time. Custom views are great for viewing complicated illustrations, documents with many Multiple Artboards, or sections of an Illustrator document you are constantly revisiting.
The 3D features in Illustrator come in handy when creating logos, illustrations, and other graphic elements. I’ve found experimenting with different settings within the 3D Options dialogs, can yield some unexpected but welcoming results. When experimenting with the 3D options, sometimes it is frustrating trying to get back to the original settings without closing the dialog. But there is an easy answer!
Here is another quick tip when using Multiple Artboards in CS4. When you Select All (Command + A), Illustrator will select all the artwork in every artboard. This is great in some situations, but sometimes you want to select all artwork in an active artboard and not in others. No problem! Simply use the keyboard shortcut Command + Option + A (Mac) or Ctrl + Alt + A (Win)!
I have been using the new Multiple Artboards feature in Illustrator CS4 more and more lately. I use it for setting up identity packages, multiple logo options , illustration variations, and so on. One thing that annoyed me, was using guides with multiple artboards. By default, guides span all artboards. Luckily, there is a simple solution to set guides to only span a particular artboard.
This is one of those tricks that I felt stupid I didn’t know after I learned about it. I’m sure others out there know about it, but there must be some that don’t. This transform function works in CS3 and CS4. I’m not sure about earlier versions of Illustrator, so if anyone knows, post a comment. I came across this trick when watching episode 58 of Layers TV, a great Adobe videocast.
Mordy Golding, author of the Real World Adobe Illustrator series (I can’t wait for his Real World Illustrator CS4 book), has posted a couple of amazing Illustrator CS4 scripts from Shane Stanley to his blog. Mordy was the Product Manger for Illustrator from 2001 to 2004, so you know these will be quality scripts. Upon using the scripts, the usability of Illustrator CS4’s Multiple Artboard function skyrockets.
